As a direct result of Vladimir Putin’s announcement on September 21st of a partial mobilization in Russia, which was the first one of its kind since World War II, the number of people booking tickets out of Russia increased dramatically. The price of airline tickets for departures from Russia in the week beginning September 21 and ending September 27 was 27% more than it had been in the week before to the announcement.
The percentage of customers purchasing one-way tickets increased from 47% the previous week to 73% the week after the announcement.
The cities that saw the greatest increase in bookings were as follows: Tbilisi, Georgia (up 629% week-over-week), Almaty, Kazakhstan (up 148%), Baku, Arizona (up 144%), Belgrade, Serbia (up 111%), Tel Aviv, Yafo, Israel (up 86%), Bishkek, Kazakhstan (up 84%), Yerevan, Armenia (up 69%), Astana, Kazakhstan (up 65%), Khudzhand,
The percentage of tickets that could be used for travel within 15 days of the date of purchase was 60% for those that were issued, but only 45% for those that were bought during the preceding week. Because to this, the average amount of time needed to complete an order decreased from 34 to 22 days.
“When considering only one-way tickets, the destination cities that saw the most growth week-on-week were as follows: Tbilisi, Georgia (up 654%), Almaty, Kazakhstan (up 435%), Belgrade, Serbia (up 206%), Baku, Arizona (up 201%), Astana, Kazakhstan (up 187%), Bishkek, Kazakhstan (up 149%), Istanbul, Turkey (up 128%), Tel Aviv Yafo, Israel (up 127%), Dubai, United Arab Emirates (
“These data are pretty amazing and match with reports at the time of a dramatic rise in ticket sales,” Olivier Ponti, Vice President of Insights at Forward Keys, stated.